Town Council members: Refrain from degrading behavior

Comments presented to the Charlestown Town Council, August 20, 2012

By Frank Glista

Recently, our citizens have been subjected to observing two members of this respected body attempting to persecute one of our citizens during the Council Comments section of their agenda.  It was bad enough to watch the President of our Town Council allow people to gang up on one of our local business owners without using his authority to control those attacks, as we witnessed back in July, but now he and Councilor DiBello have engaged in that activity themselves.

I have worked with all of you individually and have the utmost respect for anyone who occupies a council seat.  Each person elected should hold themselves to the highest standard of honor, civility and fairness.  The citizens of Charlestown have entrusted you with the responsibility of guiding our town through a maze of difficult and complex decisions.  Once sworn in, it no longer becomes a matter of personal or party agenda.  You should be willing to lead all of our townspeople, not just a select few.  

Town Council meeting – three hours of my life I’ll never get back

Three hours of tedium punctuated by a pointless debate over affordable housing and a sprinkling of the surreal

By Will Collette

It’s a wrap on the Town Council’s deliberations for August. The only really good news is that they did complete their lighter-than-usual agenda in the allotted three hours and will not need a second meeting.

Easily, the most disturbing part of this meeting was a long and rancorous debate among the Councilors over whether Charlestown should try to meet its affordable housing obligations under state law or continue trying to push the CCA’s position that state law should not apply to Charlestown.

Town Council tonight – hot topics

Muni court jurisdiction, light poles, Y-Gate lessons learned, another anti-affordable housing push?

By Will Collette

It’s always a crap shoot when you try to predict what will happen at our Town Council meetings. While you can usually count on a certain number of procedural flubs, flashes of rancor and bad decisions from this Council, you never know how heated the exchanges will be or how long the meeting will drag on.

This month, the Council agenda is less overstuffed than usual. It’s even possible they might finish in less than three hours, though I doubt it. Although some hot button issues, like the lighting ordinance, Y-Gate and affordable housing are on the agenda, they may not generate as much heat as they have in the past.

Here are my predictions for tonight’s meeting:

The REAL Town Council Agenda for Monday

For your convenience, the actual order of business

These agendas are SOOOOO confusing

By Will Collette

This is part of a new service we are providing to Charlestown residents who either attend Town Council meetings or watch the video on Clerkbase. Most newcomers to Council meetings find themselves baffled early on in each session, because the actual order of business never follows the sequence laid out in the printed and on-line versions of the agenda.

That’s because the Council changes the order of business for the convenience of guests who are attending because of a specific agenda item. They get the courtesy of having their item of interest heard earlier in the agenda.

There are also a number of “Consent Agenda” items on the agenda. These are generally non-controversial items where Council members agree to simply vote to accept them as a bloc without discussion or debate.

Check Progressive Charlestown through the weekend and on Monday for more detail on some of the more controversial issues. 

Here is how the Monday night Council agenda will actually take place. (Click here for a printer-friendly version).